The crew of an Aeroflot Superjet 100 needed to shut down an engine over Moscow during a short domestic flight yesterday. The aircraft landed safely after the incident.

Aeroflot Superjet 100 engine shut down incident

As reported by The Aviation Herald on Thursday, an Aeroflot Sukhoi Superjet 100-95 encountered problems during a flight from Moscow Zhukovsky to Moscow Sheremetyevo. The crew on flight SU-7663 had to shut down the right-hand engine.

The aircraft, registered as RA-89026, landed safely at Sheremetyevo Airport around 40 minutes after departure from Zhukovsky Airport.

Simple Flying reached out to Aeroflot for comments on the incident, but at the time of publication, there were no further details available.

Aeroflot Superjet 100

Superjet 100 safety issues

Yesterday’s incident was not the first time the Superjet 100 has had engine problems. Earlier this month, another Aeroflot SSJ100 on a domestic flight departing from Sheremetyevo Airport en route to Saratov suffered engine failure.

As the aircraft climbed to 8,000 feet, the crew noticed a problem with the left-hand engine. The SaM146 engine was shut down and the crew made an emergency landing back into Sheremetyevo Airport.

On 31st March, an Aeroflot SSJ100 reportedly experienced a hydraulic failure on a flight from Krasnodar in the south of Russia to Sheremetyevo. Shortly before landing, the crew reported some kind of hydraulic failure.

Despite the problem, the aircraft landed without incident. It is unclear whether it was an actual hydraulic failure or the result of a malfunctioning sensor, either of which is bad news for a relatively young aircraft.

Airbus A330 and Sukhoi Superjet S100
An Aeroflot Sukhoi Superjet S100-95 suffered some sort of hydraulic failure. Photo: Getty Images

Crashlanding at Sheremetyevo Airport

One of the worst incidents involving a Superjet 100 occurred on 5th May 2019 when Aeroflot flight SU-1492 made a crash landing at Sheremetyevo before bursting into flames. Forty-one of the 78 people aboard the aircraft lost their lives.

Shortly after take-off, the flight from Moscow to Murmansk suffered a lightning strike that knocked out a communications channel and the autopilot. The crew decided to make an emergency landing at Sheremetyevo.

After a hard landing, the plane, carrying a full load of fuel, bounced along the runway before the rear of the aircraft caught fire. The pilot was criticized for not staying in the air to burn off fuel or attempting to dump fuel to reduce the landing weight of the aircraft.

Aeroflot, SJ100 Crash
Photo: Getty Images

The checkered history of the Superjet

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 entered service in 2011 and gained its European Aviation Safety Agency Type Certificate in 2012. Later that year, an SSJ100 on a sales demonstration flight crashed into a mountain in Indonesia, killing 37 aviation executives and eight crew. An investigation concluded that pilot error was to blame.

The New York Times reported in 2016 that Russian aviation authorities had grounded the newest model of the aircraft. Metal fatigue had been found in a component in the tail wings, a problem usually associated with older aircraft. Sukhoi said that the defect could not cause a crash, but it was a cause for concern.

The majority of the SSJ100s are flown by Russian national carrier Aeroflot. The only non-Russian airline operating the aircraft is Mexico’s Interjet.

Would you be happy to fly on the Sukhoi Superjet 100 amid its safety concerns?